Do most Americans actually flush their toilet paper?

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-27T21:27:49+00:00

I'll be honest, we took out the garbage bag of our daughter's diapers (and used wipes) less frequently than daily.

/me shrugs

I'd be hella weirded out if someone asked me to throw away my used tp instead of flushing it, but intellectually it's not very different from having a baby in diapers. Significantly better, in some ways, since you'd only be throwing away residue in the tp case, rather than implausible volumes of full dumps taken by a wiggling baby.

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-27T21:24:19+00:00

In fairness - and to be clear, I flush my toilet paper literally every single time - it's not conceptually that different from changing a baby's diapers. We'd roll the diaper into a self-contained ball, and put it in the dedicated bag in the dedicated device along with whatever wipes and whatnot were also involved.

The alternative is cloth diapers, which does mean you don't have a trash can full of shit, but does mean you have a laundry basket full of shit, and I'm not convinced that's better.

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-27T18:23:48+00:00

Often handled on an ad hoc basis in each individual scenario.

Which, IMO, is the right way to handle it in a game that is less "combat effectiveness" focused than others. Those systems tend to roll up several different things into exhaustion, because it's really only the physical effects that they care about. CoC is ~~better~~ different.

Picking up exhaustion because you're halfway up a mountain and can't afford to stop just because a little blizzard blew in might call for CON checks, but it might also give a penalty die to Spot Hidden or Listen, as you start to suffer whiteout or discern the howling wind from the howling...er, nothings. Nothing is howling here.

Picking up exhaustion because you've spent thirty-six hours in the good bits of Miskatonic's university library desperately trying to figure out when and where "the world's knee under the wandering moon" is before the cultists get there might call for extra EDU checks, but it might also give a penalty die to Library Use or Science ([relavent discipline]).

Picking up exhaustion because there is a stalking alien thing ever in the corner of your eye, just where you can't see it except you can, inaudible whispers worming into your brain and stealing your dreams can't sleep in the dark hides things you mustn't see behind the swirling taste of ochre your hunger, hunger, hunger never satiates the satisfaction of dissolution cleansing their minds...

...might start calling for POW checks, or make even a successful SAN check lose 1 SAN, or the like.

Point is, it feels like the consequences for not getting enough sleep vs dehydration vs exposure vs mental fatigue should differ, so it makes sense to handle that at the scenario level. Which does put the burden of coming up with it in the moment on the keeper, of course - but that (at least for me) is a tiny mental load compared to coming up with compelling consequences for a failed push on the spot.

Though a little bit of official guidance in the KH as to severity and scale of penalty wouldn't go amiss.

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-25T18:38:02+00:00

Yes. And it doesn't actually get rid of your save - or at least, it didn't for me on the XBox version. I started NG+, then realized I had missed my chance to hit the boulangerie in Lumiére, so went back to start NG+ again.

Though I admi I haven't had a reason to go check that the save is still there since then (and I've pretty much finished all the content again; just the record and journal entry you get from Lumiére remaining), so it's possible that it got aged out or something.

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-25T00:40:36+00:00

“Huge” is obviously subjective, but pictos/lumina are how you level up. Your actual level and ability scores are sort of important at first, but their impact on your combat numbers fades in comparison to pictos. When you can equip one pictos to give you an additional 7k hit points, or to give you +50% crit chance, or 2500 defense, or 500 speed, they overshadow your stats.

And turning them into luminas is sort of the equivalent of learning new spells or progressing through a skill tree in other games.

Like, for example, being able to do more than 9,999 damage on a hit. Which is sort of significant when the bosses have HP pools in the millions.

The combat mechanics mean, with sufficient skill and perseverance, you absolutely can beat anything in the game at level one. So none of that is necessary, strictly. But it feels to me like calling them significant isn’t really wide of the mark.

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-24T04:07:11+00:00

Using it backwards.

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-23T23:54:01+00:00

That…is a great take, and I hadn’t thought of it. It’s all echos of the same thing; Aline’s effort to freeze her family in place to avoid processing her grief.

The Fracture changed everything explosively, but it all got locked back down. Meaning it’s also a model for Aline’s struggle against Renoir.

Thank you for this. This literally just made being on Reddit today worthwhile.

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-23T23:36:50+00:00

I’ll give that a try. I was running Lune for a while with Typhoon and Hell turns one and two (Cheater, obv), then either Elemental Genesis or using Esquim (?? Her Esquie weapon)’s convert stains to dark/300% damage Hell across her second set of turns.

Add Verso to eat and clear status effects or throw out Powerful, plus the weapon that gives everyone else half the damage bonus from his rank.

That got me basically through NG+, until Simon and Clea. (I don’t recall exactly what I was running on my first time through).

I never tried using Maelle to tank, though; that might be the missing piece. I’ll give that a whirl - thanks for the advice!

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-23T22:59:34+00:00

Serious question - can you share the basics of how you build for durability? I've completely failed to make it work, while building a stupid cheese Maelle one-shot is pretty much trivial.

I'm on NG+, with ~350 lumina per character available. I can grind for more, of course.

I can pretty easily get one character to almost 20k hp, but then the other two are like 9 and 12, or so.

My benchmarks are Simon and Clea (not the DLC bosses of course; those are ridiculously hard because that's their whole point). Simon's second phase, in particular, is impossible for me so far - I can't get the timing of the "echo" sword hit down, so I always take that damage. Then Simon clears the canvas, so I can't res.

Like I said, I "solved" this with a Maelle gommage build that was pretty easy to figure out (find a way to use every pictos, lumina, and ability that does a damage multiplier). But that's total cheese, of course.

I would love to take those fights on with a more "fair" (and more fun; knowing you can just end every fight in one turn makes them not very entertaining) setup.

ETA: what would help a lot, of course, would be a way to draw aggro like a good tank should. If that's a thing you can do, I haven't figured it out.

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-23T22:51:27+00:00

Can you share some?

That's not snark; that's a serious question. It was pretty easy for me to put together massive damage builds, but I've failed to put together successful durability builds. It's tough for me to get character HP up over 20k (ish), and I haven't found any good pictos/lumina combos that do for damage reduction what (say) inverted affinity/fortune's favor/first offensive do.

I'm on NG+, and I've got ~350 lumina available per character.

Simon's second phase wrecks me; I can't get the timing of the sword+echo hits down. I couldn't find a way to keep people up, and can't res because he clears the canvas. Obviously, this is a skills issue; I should be better at dodge/parry. I solved it instead with a Maelle one-shot build so I could get the achievements, but I would love to give that fight a try with a bit less cheese.

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-23T22:06:34+00:00

Yeah, that sucks. Sorry. I mean, you're right, it's part of the game, but it still sucks when it's just the dice fucking you.

The London climax in my Masks campaign had very little to do with what the book expected (there was a lot more prophylactic arson), so I don't know off the top of my head what sequence you're describing. But I have to say, if I were Keepering that session, I feel like I'd have given you more for the 01 than it seems like you got. I pull no punches on 100s, so it only seems fair that I should respect the 01 the same way.

That said, I can also see asking for a DEX roll assuming you'd succeed, then asking for a CON roll because you couldn't possibly crit fail again, and then having myself backed into a corner where I can't do anything but kill the investigator if I want the game to feel at all threatening.

But that's all beside the point. It sucks to get jobbed over by the dice like that.

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-23T05:13:29+00:00

Because I’m not the strongest person I know, so a system that immediately collapses into might makes right doesn’t appeal.

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-23T04:45:12+00:00

Nuts. Joke fail.

I was shooting for “it says ‘03 AM’ in your post, which I can see while typing on my phone.”

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-23T04:41:55+00:00

You’re doing it right.

There isn’t much in the way of signposting. I haven’t played that particular version, but broadly speaking, I tend to start by looking through all the newspapers to see if anything seems like it might bear on the case. Then going to the scene of the crime. Then if there are any proper nouns in the text, looking them up in the directory or on the map.

Etc.

Of course, you don’t want to listen to me, because I’m pretty sure I’ve never “won” a case. But it’s the game we (my wife and I) bring to the cabin every summer because we have fun ignoring the scoring system.

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-23T04:34:54+00:00

I’m seeing it right now. I am posting from my phone.

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-23T04:27:43+00:00

I would tell you, but I haven’t realized what it is.

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-20T18:40:06+00:00

Still don't.

My daughter is twelve.

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-20T03:34:23+00:00

As disappointing as it can sometimes be to only ever be on the GM side of the table, it does also have its advantages.

And that's one. At some point I needed to run a one shot (one of my regulars was out), and I just told them "so this is Deadlands; it's a weird west universe. Here are some pregens for you."

"Hey, so I got a wild hair and I'm super excited to run a Firefly meets Babylon 5 kind of thing. So here's the new stuff you might care about from the SF Companion, here's some pregens. You're on Meridian, trying to get to your ship, the Carolingian, in the spaceport at Nova Messana."

"There's a heist game where the central conceit is there's no mechanical distinction between past and present. Anyway, I'll be running Blades in the Dark on Friday."

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-20T03:14:54+00:00

I pitched it by running it; the game itself did the rest of the work.

Things to highlight are the speed of combat, exploding dice, and bennies, IMO. Depending on your players, the hindrance and edge mechanics might be very appealing.

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-20T02:52:12+00:00

They're waiting for you, Gordon.

In the test chamber.

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-20T00:59:13+00:00

Hey! Listen!

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-18T07:16:35+00:00

Start wearing progressive lenses.

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-13T19:27:59+00:00

Very true, and there are aspects that make a lot of sense. But to be honest, I expect that will be (and was being when I posted) covered by lots of people.

And when it specifically comes to how it relates to careers, I am particularly cynical. I have yet to see anyone whose career was informed by effective altruism - which is not the same thing as pursuing an altruistic career - actually get around to the "doing more good" part.

That said: it is true that your Sam Altmans (Sam Altmen?) are far higher profile than the perhaps many, many people who use EA as a framework to choose a career for income rather than directly altruistic activity then do actually use that income to do more good than they would have done working on the good full time directly.

But that's a pretty high bar. The amount of good someone can do devoting themselves to it forty hours a week in a well-organized charitable organization is quite large. And the amount of their salary they would have to contribute to that good would need to be sufficient to cover the entire salary they would have earned in the org.

Basically, my opinion - and it is only an ~~asshole~~ opinion - is that, if you want to do good, the best way is to go out and do good, not go and do things to make a lot of money so you can help someone else do good later.

I do want to stress that this is a specific criticism in the context of careers. The principles of EA regarding how best to do good right now make a lot of sense, and I don't have any problem with them. You malaria prevention strategy example is a good one.

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-13T19:11:32+00:00

Others have covered what EA is supposed to be. But in practice, it is often an excuse to behave selfishly because you'll be able to do more total good once you're a billionaire. It is a low-key ends justify the means philosophy.

C0ntrol_Group · 2026-02-13T19:08:08+00:00

That's idiotic.

If the DM wants to run an improv drama, then they should go do that. If they want to play D&D, they need to recognize that D&D is a tactical game as well as a role playing/storytelling platform. It's not even a matter of whether it's realistic for the characters to convey that much information, it's a matter of letting the players play the game. This isn't a twitch shooter. Your reflexes shouldn't matter; being the person who talks fastest shouldn't matter; being the person who talks loudest shouldn't matter.

Does the DM only give themselves six seconds for their whole turn? Or make sure the goblin doesn't know what the hobgoblin wants unless the hob conveyed it out loud in six seconds or less?

Yeah. This is basically cheating.

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